Last updated: March 28, 2023
Article
St. Paul's Church and World War II
(Courtesy of Joan Pearson Shields)
Text of an exhibition that was on display in the visitors' center at St. Paul's Church N.H.S., in Mt. Vernon, NY, from 2019 - 2023.
Introductory panel:
The St. Paul’s area struggled with many of the challenges that confronted American communities on the home front during World War II. But during the conflict of 1939-1945, the parish realized a heightened sense of importance. At the time, St. Paul’s was recognized as a church representing something special about American heritage. This identity was rooted in the historic significance of the site in shaping fundamental national values. While this vision was historically exaggerated, the contemporary conviction presented St. Paul’s as the originating point of some of America’s most prized values, enshrined in the first amendment to the Bill of Rights. Those freedoms acquired a particular relevance in a war confronting brute intolerance and fascism abroad. The wartime restoration of the church interior to its original 18th century appearance and designation of St. Paul’s as a national historic site emphasized this association with the Bill of Rights
The worldwide conflict and the largest mobilization of people and resources in American history impacted the community in a variety of ways. Many parishioners were among the 15 million men and women serving in the nation’s armed forces across several continents from 1941-1945, the years of actual American military involvement. The tense emotional saga of following the military service and welfare of those on active duty consumed the lives of local families. A special altar in the St. Paul’s sanctuary provided a religious vehicle for maintaining a connection to the young men and women serving in the war.
While these were particularized elements of the community’s wartime experience, St. Paul’s shared components of the national challenges of living in a country at war. With the tremendous focus on the resources needed for the war effort, shortages of basic commodities affected the daily lives of local residents. The war’s great surge in employment and wages actually led to vastly increased income and wealth. Scrap drives, periodic blackouts, air raid drills and the ubiquitous expectations of investing in the war effort through the purchase of bonds were regular reminders of the struggle, even though the actual fighting was remote.
We invite you to learn about these extraordinary times through this exhibition utilizing documents, prints, photographs, art work, artifacts and sounds. It was made possible by:
National Park Service/Department of the Interior
Society of the National Shrine of the Bill of Rights
New York Humanities
BCM Mt. Vernon
Historic Preservation & Current Events: The restoration of the church in wartime
The restoration of the interior of the church to the original appearance of 1787 was not designed to overlap with the World War, but it gave the project much greater poignancy and significance. The effort to re-construct the pew arrangement of the late 18th century based on original specifications began in the 1930s, under the aegis of Rev. Harold Weigle, the church rector. His vision of the church’s historic significance underscored a strong connection to the Bill of Rights’ first amendment. *
Under Rev. Weigle’s leadership, plans for an outdoor altar and a commemorative museum devoted to John Peter Zenger, the printer of the New York Weekly Journal, had never gathered sufficient support. Instead, the church settled on an acceptable form of historic preservation at the time. They turned back the clock and restored the sanctuary to the appearance of the late 18th century. This strategy honored the original parishioners who developed the church and commemorated the founding generation and ideals of the country. The project gained considerable attention through the participation of Sara Roosevelt, mother of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who helped raise funds for the initiative.
But the timing of the restoration project was fortunate and ultimately advantageous. It overlapped with the onset of war in Europe, and the strong, looming possibility of American involvement from late 1939 through late 1941. Partly in response, the United States through various means re-emphasized the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) as part of a unique national heritage. These liberties and freedoms were a striking contrast to the brutally anti-democratic, totalitarian policies painfully evident among the German, Italian and Japanese nations. The committee planning the church restoration recognized this political development and underlined the connection of the church to this cornerstone of American liberties, leading to broader significance and increased funding for the project.
Work to restore the church sanctuary commenced in early 1941. Pew benches were removed. Stained glass windows and other elements of ritual and worship added to St. Paul’s since the late 18th century were eliminated. Over the next 18 months, Perry & Shaw, the Boston-based architectural firm that had restored Colonial Williamsburg, re-constructed the world of 1787. This concept featured tall walled box pews identified with the original family names, a re-orientation toward the south wall, and the construction of the three tiered pulpit -- the scene that greets visitors to the site today. The restored church was formally rededicated in May 1942, six months following American entry into the World War. President Franklin D. Roosevelt regretted his absence at the consecration, but declared in a cable to Rev. Weigle read at the ceremony:
"This is a particularly fitting time for the rededication of St. Paul’s Church, Eastchester as a shrine to the Bill of Rights. These rights embodied in the organized law of the land through the wisdom and foresight of the Fathers of the Constitution are now under assault by the Axis powers. The issue is clearly drawn between all our cherished freedoms under the Bill of Rights and the denial of those freedoms under the dictatorship and tyranny of totalitarianism with which our enemies seek to throttle the whole world. I trust that the service of rededication of the grand old fabric of Saint Paul’s will inspire all with a renewed sense of appreciation of our heritage of freedom."
*( The source of this connection was the coverage in the inaugural issue of The New York Weekly Journal of a famous, controversial election on the village green at St. Paul’s on October 29, 1733. It is one of the earliest surviving accounts of the political lives of the colonists, capturing in previously unrecorded detail the ritual of early American elections, the issues that animated their public discourse and the process of religious discrimination, denying the suffrage to Quakers because of their faith--based refusal to take a Biblical oath attesting to meeting the property qualification to vote. As a result of the documented discrimination at the election, the Quakers in 1734 were granted freedom of conscience in future votes -- allowed to affirm, rather than compelled to swear -- a milestone in the development of freedom of religion. At the time of World War II, the church also expressed an exaggerated concept that the coverage of the election led directly to the birth of a free press in America through the trial and acquittal of the paper’s printer John Peter Zenger on charges of seditious libel, rather than pointing out that the report contributed to Zenger’s indictment and trial.)
Consensus & Compliance: The role of the press in wartime
The church emerged during the years of World War II as a rallying point for declarations about the value of a free press in a democratic society. The source of this identification was the famous election for an open seat in the colonial assembly at St. Paul’s, the unprecedented coverage of that event in the first issue of The New York Weekly Journal and subsequent developments leading to the imprisonment and trial of John Peter Zenger.
The newspaper industry embraced this association, especially after the completion of the restoration in the spring of 1942. During the war, conventions and commemorative occasions at the church and at New York City cited St. Paul’s as the birthplace of the free press in America. Prominent editors lauded the role of an independent press in a democratic society. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, speaking at the May 1942 consecration of the restored church, implored:
"Today, on what was the Village Green at Eastchester, we are trying to recapture some of the drama of the past and to preserve some of the symbols of our way of life in order that future generations may have a clearer understanding of the reasons we have for once more involving ourselves in world conflict. For we have involved ourselves. Had we not shown by act and deed that freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press and assembly were living vital factors of our American life -- the perpetuation of which we would not compromise -- we should have been a member of the Axis and of the so called New Order rather than the arsenal of democracy and the force which will again bring peace to the world with the four fundamental freedoms of out Bill of Rights inscribed in our history in brighter letters than ever. "
This emphasis on a free press as a cornerstone of a democratic society, and the almost spiritual role of St. Paul’s in fostering that tradition, overlapped with what was arguably a golden age of American journalism. While Americans learned about the war through radio and newsreels, newspapers were the main source of information on the progress of the conflict, the vital link of the battlefields of North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific to the home-front. Even small papers dispatched correspondents overseas to cover the war. The Mt. Vernon Daily Argus was the most consistent source of news about the war for local residents.
There were more than 2,000 daily papers in the country in 1940, with a population of about 135 million; today, in a nation of 325 million, there are less than 1,500. Overall, Americans could follow the war through 11,000 periodicals during the early 1940s. In an interesting contrast to the profile of American journalism today, reporters in the era of World War II were usually not college graduates, and the newsroom rather than the university was the source of education for most reporters. Perhaps for this reason, the gulf between the reporters and the soldiers was not as great as in more recent military conflicts. War correspondents spent a good deal of time with the troops, close to and sometimes on the front lines – in planes, aboard ships, and on the ground.
Newspaper reporters and editors’ understanding of the role of a free press in a democratic society included the inherent patriotic requirements to contribute to the war effort. Correspondents intuitively understood their role in sustaining home front morale, accentuating the positive, and serving as the front line of communication conveying accounts of success which often omitted some of the harsher realities of the war. These practices were especially strong in 1942, when Americans suffered defeats and most of the war developments favored the Axis powers.
This approach was reflected through a co-operative relationship with the government and military authorities responsible for the war effort, and included adherence to the government’s policy of news control through the Office of War Information. A “Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press” was issued on January 15, 1942 giving strict instructions on proper handling of news. The code was voluntarily adopted by all of the major news organizations and implemented by the more than 1,600 members of the press accredited by the armed forces during the war.
In the period immediately after the war, the pattern of valuing St. Paul’s as an appropriate location for extolling and honoring the free press continued. A revealing example was a 1946 program honoring the “Soldiers of the Press”, 46 correspondents killed while covering the conflict. It featured a floral presentation by the brother of Ernie Pyle, perhaps the best known correspondent of the war, who was killed while covering the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
Religion & War: Victory Altar at St. Paul’s
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was an Episcopalian, believed religion was a distinct strength of America, and emphasized faith in the nation’s war effort and especially in the armed forces. Under his leadership, the military incorporated religion into the fabric of soldiers’ lives by assigning clergy to the troops based on percentages of the religious affiliations of the nation’s population. The goal of this strategy was to have soldiers’ religious needs served by ministers of their own faiths. During the course of the war, American soldiers increasingly found motivation through prayer, especially at times of combat engagement.
St. Paul’s, an Episcopal Church that Roosevelt had visited in the early 1930s, established a special platform to sustain a religious connection to the parish’s soldiers serving overseas. The church maintained a Victory Altar during World War II. It identified the names of the young men and women from the parish who were serving in the war. Forty-six names were listed. The altar was dedicated on March 15, 1943. Photos of the parishioners were hung beside the altar, and stars placed on an accompanying flag in their honor. The altar was erected against the doorway on the north wall. Lighted candles were placed there by the families. Each Sunday morning following the mass, the congregation gathered about this small altar to pray for the safety of the congregants listed on the board.
Before Pearl Harbor, Protestant churches were deeply divided over the World War on moral and religious grounds. Even after formal American entry into the conflict, many churches expressed a cautious patriotism, aware and uncomfortable with the memory of the blanket support for the war effort in World War I. That support was criticized after the war as inconsistent with a religious devotion to peace and a universal respect for life. The altar at St. Paul’s symbolized a recognition of the war. It allowed the parish to sustain a connection to the young soldiers of their religious community through faith and ritual -- “where anxious parents can kneel in prayer for those dear to them,” Rev. Weigle said in dedicating the platform -- without necessarily endorsing the inherent violence of the conflict.
Parishioners at war
Through this altar at St. Paul’s, we gain an understanding of the range of military service offered by the young men and women of the parish. As a composite, most of them served in the Army, and entered the service through the draft in 1942. These conclusions correspond with other patterns of American mobilization for the war. But there were also several parishioners serving in the Navy, Army Air Force, Red Cross and the Women’s Army Corps. None of the congregants died in the line of duty.
The two children of church minister Rev. Weigle and his wife Anna served overseas. Their son William achieved the rank of lieutenant and flew C-47 supply transport planes in combat zones for the Army Air Force in Europe, earning several battle stars and helping to supply besieged American troops at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. Their daughter Elizabeth Weigle volunteered with the American Red Cross. Assigned to a Marine Division, she organized recreational and relief services in the Pacific, and met her eventual husband while on duty. Anna Weigle exchanged letters with her children and the other congregants listed on the altar, and was “greatly cheered and encouraged when their letters reached me, telling me they were safe.”
One of the names identified was Tom Vitkowski, a paratrooper involved with the D-Day invasion of Normandy, in France, on June 6, 1944; he also fought at the Battle of the Bulge, earning five battle stars through his term of service.
Several men listed on the Victory Altar served with the Navy on ships of various kinds. George Plume, Jr. had enlisted in 1938, at age 18, and remained in the service throughout the war. He served on several vessels, including the USS Icefish, a submarine involved in the Pacific campaign in 1944-45. The Icefish destroyed and sank Japanese shipping with hundreds of thousands of pounds of cargo in the East China Sea. Charles Otto La Vigna, whose father immigrated from Italy, also served on several ships, including the USS Delta, PC 618 (one of the Navy’s submarine chaser classifications) and the USS Pollux, reaching the rank of Yeoman 2nd Class. Most of these were cargo transport ships, and La Vigna, one of nine children, helped deliver supplies in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
Louis B. Wheat was 17 when he enlisted in 1942, serving on the USS Meredith in the Pacific. The ship was assigned to the task force which launched the bombing raid on Tokyo led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle in April 1942, the first air operation to strike the Japanese home islands. A member of the Disabled Veterans of America, Seaman 1st class Wheat suffered injury at some point in his tour of duty, but apparently served through the war’s conclusion.
Based on available evidence, there is little sense that these combatants expressed an appreciation of representing a church associated with the creation of the Bill of Rights. While public occasions at St. Paul’s back in Mt. Vernon emphasized the church’s special place in the ideological confrontations reflected in the war, the individual soldiers and sailors on the battlefields and seas expressed themes common among most American service members. These included the determination to return home safely to their families, religious faith and a commitment to the success of their units -- the daily interaction of troops forming tight bonds of cohesion -- in providing the key impetus for men in battle.
Robert Dickert, an electrician’s apprentice living in the northern Bronx when the war started, served with the Army Air Force in the European theater. On February 10, 1944, as a 2nd Lieutenant, Dickert piloted a B 17 F bomber, the Pegasus, in a raid corresponding with a period of almost continuous attacks against German installations by Allied planes. After dropping the explosives, the 24-year-old St. Paul’s congregant’s bomber encountered heavy enemy fighter attacks, sustaining some damage. Fearing the plane might not reach its home base, Lieutenant Dickert instructed several crew members, including two who were wounded, to evacuate the Pegasus. However, Lieutenant Dickert, who was baptized at St. Paul’s on December 7, 1919, skillfully maneuvered the propeller plane back to base in southeastern England.
One of the better documented stories proceeding from the Victory Altar chronicles the service of Gertrude Pearson, who joined the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) in January 1943, at age 22. She was one of about 150,000 who enrolled in the uniformed women’s auxiliary of the Army. Employed as a clerk on the eve of the war, Gertrude lived on a street in the northern Bronx, perhaps two miles from St. Paul’s where many church congregants resided, including several who fought in the war. She served with the WACs in a tactical signal corps unit in the European theater, and actually landed at Normandy in France in late August 1944, two months after the D-Day invasion. The area was still vulnerable to German bombing, and Ms. Pearson was instructed by a superior officer to locate a fox hole for safety. Ms. Pearson remained in forward operating positions, just behind combat zones, through the remainder of the European campaign.
The Great paradox: Wartime Prosperity & Shortages
Immediately after World War II, this building, which had functioned as the parish hall since 1925, was transformed into living quarters, a development that sheds light on perhaps the most significant domestic development of the war. The residents were the minister’s trusted young secretary Adeline Holley and her new husband Tom Vitkowski, who served with the Army in the European theater of operations. The newlyweds lived in the refashioned carriage house beginning in early 1946.
How and why did that happen?
Along with the rest of the country, the Mt. Vernon area experienced an unprecedented surge in employment and income due to government spending and private sector mobilization in support of the war effort. There were several war-related manufacturers in southern Westchester County. These included a General Electric Plant that opened blocks from St. Paul’s in mid-1944 and employed 300 workers.
On a national scale, employment at these defense industries and a myriad of related trades and services created virtually full employment, lifting the nation out of the Great Depression. The needs of the war economy created 17 million new jobs across the country, and opened the labor market to significant participation by women, with 6.3 million women gaining employment. A majority of these women were married, which was an unprecedented development in American history. The iconic image of Rosie the Riveter has immortalized this component of the social history of the nation during World War II, even though wages for women lagged behind pay for men performing similar work.
The record levels of employment generated unprecedented prosperity. Per capita income rose from $373 in 1940 to $1,074 in 1945, and total personal income went from $81 billion to $182 billion in the same period. This led to one of great paradoxes of the war years: Americans had more money than they could spend, especially in light of the decreased availability of consumer items, along with rationing of basic commodities and the national imperative of diverting resources toward the war effort. In 1942, for instance, the difference between disposable income and available goods approached $17 billion.
The war also created the highest levels of internal migration in American history. Over four million workers -- with their families, some nine million people -- left their homes for employment in war plants. The increase in the movement of African American families from the rural South to the urban North, especially Detroit, left an indelible change on the demographics of the country. These patterns of migration also caused a considerable level of wartime inter-racial strife and violence, particularly attacks by white workers and residents on black families.
In a policy designed to direct building materials toward the needs of the military, the War Production Board in April 1942 banned all nondefense construction and put stringent limitations on the alteration or improvement of existing residential buildings. These policies, along with the large numbers of people on the move, generated a national housing shortage, both during and immediately after the war. By the spring of 1945, all American cities reported a lack of available single family homes and apartments.
The diversion of resources toward the war effort also led to critical shortages of the staples of residential living -- sinks, furniture, bedframes, electrical appliances, and plumbing fixtures. In 1945-46, returning veterans struggled to locate housing all across the country. In light of these circumstances, perhaps it is not surprising that the church made the parish hall available as living quarters to a returning decorated soldier and his new wife, a devoted congregant.
Financing the War: The St. Paul’s Bell and the Bond Drives
Somebody passing St. Paul’s Church in late April 1941 would have observed a curious procedure which was ultimately connected to the drive to give Americans a role in the struggles of World War II through the purchase of War Bonds. Two muscular workmen were using a pulley rope and counter weight to slowly and carefully lower the 1758 bronze church bell -- constructed at the same London foundry as the famed Liberty Bell -- out of a window on the north side of the church tower, and then into a truck for transportation to Manhattan.
The immediate cause of the removal of the church’s prized possession was the utilization of the bell to help raise funds for the restoration project. But the small bronze bell was soon leased to the Treasury Department for the duration of the war for use in the campaign to encourage purchase of War Bonds. The bell traveled the country from 1942-1945, and was placed on the stage at bond drives. It was identified as a tangible link to America’s founding generation, and the property of a church associated with the origins of the Bill of Rights
Under the authority of the Treasury Department, the massive drive to sell War Bonds emerged as both a method to raise revenue and to enhance the connection of citizens to the war effort. The Defense Bond campaign began in the fall of 1940, more than a year before the United States officially entered the war, in response to rapid German victories in Western Europe. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau conceived of the Bond campaign as a strategy to educate Americans about the vital issues, particularly the future of democratic governments, at stake in the European war.
The sales effort increased after Pearl Harbor, and the notes were renamed War Bonds but the emphasis remained on facilitating a way to contribute, responding to the “what can I do to help” query. The idealistic notion of using the bonds as a vehicle to educate people about the importance of democracy and worldwide values of freedom and self-determination was eclipsed over the duration of the war. Most people purchased bonds to help family members serving in the armed forces, to invest their money wisely, to combat inflation, or to save for postwar purchases. An illustrative bond drive notice in a June 1944 issue of the Daily Argus listed 7,300 city residents serving in the war and urged readers to “Buy Your Bonds in Mount Vernon for Those Mount Vernon Boys”.
The lack of available consumer goods and the surge in employment and wages also led to bond purchases as one of the obvious outlets for Americans’ money. The bonds sold at 75 percent of their face value in denominations of $25 up to $10,000. They matured after ten years, yielding a minimal 2.9-percent in interest on principal. The War Finance Committee was placed in charge of supervising the sale of all bonds, and the War Advertising Council promoted voluntary compliance with bond buying. Popular contemporary art was used to help promote the bonds such as the Warner Brothers theatrical cartoon, "Buy Any Bonds Today?" Locally, the Mt. Vernon Daily Argus carried daily reminders and promotions about the importance of purchasing bonds.
More than a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of advertising was donated during the first three years of the National Defense Savings Program. The government appealed to the public through popular culture. Norman Rockwell's painting series, the Four Freedoms toured in a war bond effort that raised $132 million. Bond rallies were held throughout the country with famous celebrities, usually Hollywood film stars, to enhance the bond advertising effectiveness. Irene Dunne appeared at a very successful rally at Mt. Vernon City Hall in 1942. Boy Scouts, women’s groups, veterans’ organization, and ethnic civic associations canvassed the city in 1944, often door to door, to secure pledges and purchases of bonds.
Many motion pictures during the time, especially war dramas, included a graphic shown during the closing credits advising patrons to 'Buy War Bonds and Stamps,' which were sometimes sold in the lobby of the theater. The Music Publishers Protective Association encouraged its members to include patriotic messages on the front of their sheet music like "Buy U.S. Bonds and Stamps."
Over the course of the war 85 million Americans purchased bonds totaling approximately $185 billion, about half of the total cost of the war. A portion of those sales came through rallies where the St. Paul’s colonial bell “played a prominent part,” as a War Finance Committee official acknowledged in a letter to the church following a 1944 ceremony.
Salvage was the word: Citizen Participation
During the war years, observers of the historic St. Paul’s cemetery would have noticed a significant change: much of the burial plot iron work enclosures were removed. Detached from stone corner posts, the long iron rods were donated as part of a series of drives for valuable war materials held in Mt. Vernon, part of a nationwide series of salvage campaigns.
These efforts represented one of the most recognizable channels for public participation in the war effort, helping millions of people to sense they were contributing to the struggle. The scrap drives of 1942 overlapped with American military reversals which created a considerable level of national fear about invasion and defeat. People were anxious to do something, almost anything to help, in addition to sending their sons and daughters into the armed forces. Goals, quotas, and tabulations of donated scrap created rivalries among communities, including in Westchester County, and fostered community pride in places like Mt. Vernon. The city of about 65,000, roughly one tenth of Westchester’s population, boasted in December 1942 of collecting one-fifth of all metal gathered for the year, “the best mark in the county,” proclaimed the Daily Argus.
The campaigns revealed an interesting mixture of success and failure on a materialistic level. Rubber collection was an example of a drive that did not meet expectations of contributing to the war effort. The country faced a significant shortage of rubber in 1942, generated largely by Japanese conquests in East Asia which shut off access to natural supplies of the material. In June, President Roosevelt launched the great national rubber drive, urging Americans to turn in “old tires, old rubber raincoats, old garden hose, rubber shoes, bathing caps, gloves,” usually at local gas stations. The response was tremendous, yielding an estimated 450,000 tons of scrap rubber. Newsreel footage captured youngsters rolling old bicycle and automobile tires into gigantic piles at collection centers. In Mt. Vernon, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts participated in a well- publicized, successful drive for rubber scrap launched in July from City Hall. Station wagons and trucks reached all sections of the city, announcing their presence with buglers before the youngsters rang door bells and knocked on doors seeking rubber donations.
But the problem was the lack of an efficient, cost effective means of re-cycling used rubber into the kind of material that could be utilized for modern production. A sizable percentage of the scrap rubber collected in 1942 was never used for military purposes. The real solution was the development of synthetic rubber and insuring that rubber produced by American factories was used exclusively for military purposes. Gas rationing, for instance, was designed primarily to reduce automobile use and curtail the need for new tires.
Metal scrap drives were more successful, including the efforts that left a mark on the physical landscape of the St. Paul’s burial yard. Iron and steel could readily be melted down for use in the production of ammunition. Beginning in 1942, housewives donated pots and pans; children contributed their metal toys, farmers gave over their tractors; people removed bumpers and fenders from their cars; communities melted down metal Civil War canons. One campaign accumulated five million tons of steel in just three weeks, and scrap-metal drives continued for most of the war. These drives supplemented increased steel-making production, construction of new factories to produce the metal and improved designs for weapons. .
Other elements of citizen participation might seem trivial -- and contemporary critics cited these efforts as insignificant morale boosters -- but they undoubtedly contributed to the overall success of the American war effort. In 1943, for instance, Victory Gardens produced 40 percent of the country’s fresh vegetables. In Mt. Vernon, the demand for plots led the city to double the number of available gardens in 1943 compared with the previous year. Salvaged kitchen fat was used to produce glycerin, an ingredient in drugs and explosives. The Civil Air Patrol, which included a Mt. Vernon chapter, was organized in 1941 to monitor the coasts and assist in search and rescue operations, and played a vital role. In the 18 months before the Navy took over patrol duty, the CAP spotted 173 U-boats, located 363 survivors of sunken ships and downed aircraft, and reported 91 ships in distress.
The Toll of War: Campaigns & Casualties
Dedicated in 1948, a bronze plaque embedded into a large stone on the plaza of City Hall at Mt. Vernon lists 214 names of local residents who gave their lives fighting for American victory in World War II. They were among 416,800 Americans who were killed in action during the conflict that stretched across several continents. Those Mt. Vernon residents were part of the largest military force (more than 15 million total) ever assembled in American history, one that struggled through initial setbacks, especially in the Pacific theater, but eventually emerged, along with their allies, victorious on all fronts.
Those Mt. Vernon soldiers were also part of what was by far the most technologically advanced war to date, with sophisticated deadly weapons produced and improved during the conflict. Among other weapons that helped the Americans achieve victory, soldiers would have utilized the B-17 bomber, the M4 Sherman Tank, the pineapple grenade, the radio proximity fuze which made anti-aircraft fire much more effective, the M2 Browning machine gun, the M1 self-loading rifle, the M1 Thompson sub-machine gun, the Ka-Barr knife used by Marines, the M 101 Howitzer artillery piece, and the bazooka.
The United States joined a war that was already in progress, especially in the European theater, where the German Army had conquered much of Europe, isolated Great Britain, and driven deep into the Soviet Union by the spring of 1942. In that regard, the strategic initiative required containing the German advance, and then a gradual but steady series of campaigns to roll back the Axis armies. The first movement in this campaign was the November 1942 invasion of North Africa by a largely American force of about 400,000, under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower, a gifted tactician. Called Operation Torch, this campaign consisted of a series of battles over the next seven months against German and Italian troops. By May 1943 the Americans and allies had achieved victory in the North African campaign. Casualties included Robert E. Greene, pilot of a Navy torpedo bomber, from Mt. Vernon, 23, who had recently married a young woman from Bronxville.
Committed to the Mediterranean region, the Americans and their British partners invaded and conquered Sicily in the summer of 1943. By following this strategy, Allied leaders resisted calls by their Soviet Union allies for a direct invasion of Europe to relieve pressure on the eastern front. With large armies and tremendous amounts of equipment and supplies situated in the region, the American forces then began a long and very costly campaign to destroy the German and Italian armies in Italy. Among Americans killed in that struggle were Corporal John McMahon of the Fifth Army, 21, who lived on S. 8th Avenue in Mt. Vernon, and Private First Class Patsy Sposato, 28, of W. Sidney Avenue. Upon inductions in 1942, McMahon had worked as a Chauffer and Sposato was timekeeper for the Works Progress Administration.
The largest operation of the war, with nearly three million service members, 11,000 aircraft and 2,000 vessels, was the D-Day invasion of France, on June 6, 1944, the launching of the long-awaited second front against the Germans. Here, all the American firepower, technological strength, industrial capacity, strategic planning and military skill were evident. After some initial stiff resistance by the Germans, Allied armies swept east across Europe heading for Berlin. In this sector of fighting, among the casualties was Lieutenant Colonel Percy DeWitt McCarley, Jr., who lived on Birch Street in Mt. Vernon, and had graduated from West Point in 1939. McCarley had also fought in the North Africa and Sicily campaigns. At the time, the Daily Argus reported that he was the 86th city resident killed in service.
These drives were halted by the German offensive called the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and eastern France in December 1944. The American 101st Airborne division held off the enemy advance at Bastogne until the Third Army, under General George Patton, reversed the tide of battle. American and Soviet forces achieved victory in Germany on May 8th, celebrated in America as VE Day.
In the Pacific, initial Japanese victories in the first half of 1942 were eventually reversed once the United States deployed its massive forces. In particular, two crucial early Naval victories halted Japanese expansion. They were the Battle of Coral Sea near Australia in May 1942 followed by the pivotal American victory at the Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in early June, which dealt the Japanese Navy a defeat from which they never really recovered. That achievement was greatly assisted by American success in breaking Japanese naval codes, allowing Navy leaders to accurately predict enemy movements. Midway, though, was so secret, that most Americans did not learn about the scope and significance of the victory.
From there, the Americans -- and in the Pacific, much more than the European theater, it really was almost completely an American war -- began what came to be known as a series of island-hopping strikes, leading westward toward the Japanese home islands. These included intense, deadly fighting at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands from August 1942 through February 1943. Further operations attacked and secured Guam, Iwo Jima and finally Okinawa in June 1945. Further south in the Pacific, Americans fought and died in large numbers in the conquest of New Guinea. Soldiers lost included First Lieutenant John Moller a pilot in the Army Air Force, well known as an outstanding athlete in Mt. Vernon. Recently married, Moller’s wife from Larchmont had just given birth to a son. The American success in New Guinea helped to facilitate the recapture of the Philippines by forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur in 1945.
American planes dropped the first and only nuclear weapons used in warfare on Japan in August 1945, leading to the unconditional surrender of the Japanese forces on board the battleship Missouri, in Tokyo Bay, on September 2, 1945.